Reduced to rubble

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT), John Pirro THE NEWS-TIMES

Published 1:00 am, Thursday, April 20, 2006

DANBURY - A fire that was visible for miles tore through a house on Candlewood Lake on Wednesday evening, sparking an explosion and leaving the lakeside residence little more than a smoldering pile of debris.

No one was hurt by either the blaze or the blast, but firefighters had to dodge live electrical wires as they doused brush fires ignited by heat and debris.

They also struggled to keep the flames from spreading to adjacent homes.

The house on Hillside Road, off Acre Drive on the north side of the lake, is owned by Jeffrey and
Karla Mortara
, who split their time between the Danbury residence and a home in New York.

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Karla Mortara had been in the
Danbury house
, but was running errands when the fire broke out.

"I got a phone call from my brother-in-law (Danbury police officer Jay Mortara) and he said, You better come to the house," Karla Mortara said as she was comforted by neighbors.

"I haven't even seen it yet. The firemen haven't let me down there," Mortara said.

James Tatarzycki of Blackberry Road was fishing from a boat halfway across the lake when he smelled an odor "like burning plastic."

"I started looking around in the boat because I thought I'd dropped a cigarette on a seat cushion," he said. "Then I saw a little flame coming out a window on the first floor of the house."

Tatarzycki reached for his cell phone, but by the time he'd been connected with a 911 operator, the whole side of the building was in flames. "It's too bad. It was a gorgeous house," he said.

Drawn by the smell of smoke, neighborhood resident
Rich Lubus
and his two sons walked to the house to investigate. Lubus said they were standing on the road, about 50 feet above the lakeside residence, when it exploded.

"The fireball came right up to the road," Lubus said. "I could feel the heat on my face. We took off running."

The house was accessible by a wooden stairway leading from a two-bay garage at street level, or by a driveway several hundred feet farther down the narrow, winding road.

Assistant Fire Chief
Paul Omasta
said the house was engulfed in flames by the time firefighters arrived. "A big part of the problem was that a lot of the fire was on the lake side, which was inaccessible to us," he said.

Fire officials set up one of the department's tower trucks on the road adjacent to the burning home, extended the ladder about 50 feet in the air, and poured water directly down on the flames.

When firefighters tried to go down the wooden stairway to the house, electrical wires fell on the stairs, forcing them to scramble to safety.

Thick clouds of dark smoke rose hundreds of feet in the air, and the flames were visible across the lake from Candlewood Town Park on Hayestown Road.

Firefighters kept the blaze from spreading to adjacent homes, but the flames charred the side of the Mortaras' garage and totally destroyed a small shed between the house and the lake.

Connecticut Light Power crews eventually tied off the live wires, but kept electricity flowing through the main lines so neighboring houses didn't lose power.